PREFACE A LETTER TO READERS There are words that change their meaning over time. "Wine," for me, is one of them. As a child, it was the dark bottle on the edge of the Sunday tablecloth, the one I wasn't supposed to touch. As a teenager, it was a secret shared in the cellar with friends. As a student in sommelier class, it was a subject to be learned, a code to be deciphered, a grammar of aromas and colours. Then, over time, it became something else entirely — something I struggle to define technically, perhaps precisely why I've started discussing it. My name is Giovanni Scapolatiello. I'm a certified sommelier with AIS Italia (Italian Society of Sommeliers), and for a few years I've been moving between cellars, vineyards, and digital screens, carrying a nickname I earned in the field and wear with pride: Mister Wine. Not because I know everything about wine — no one does, and anyone who says otherwise is lying or selling something — but because, for me, wine has become a way of being in the world. I've tasted thousands of wines. I've visited wineries that resembled cathedrals and others that resembled garages, both capable of moving me. I've met silent winemakers and winemakers who talk like rivers in flood. Over time, I've come to understand that the most interesting thing wasn't in the glass — or not only there — but in the people who filled it. From this conviction, the series entitled "Mister Wine – The Great Beauty of Wine" was born.